


The Noises Never Seem to Stop

by Mygiftofthought



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Mental Illness, Misophonia, Sound Triggers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 09:15:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11711388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mygiftofthought/pseuds/Mygiftofthought
Summary: A bit of an explanation of an unexplainable and mostly unknown mental illness and its effects.





	1. 1

He sits on the couch in the corner of the room, the furthest chair away from the doorway or the kitchen with the dishes and the water and the beeping. He sits next to the fan and counts the seconds to see just how long he can last this time. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, tries to distract his mind while the sounds do their best to distract him from his own thoughts. 

Focus on the fan. It’s steady. It’s safe. The buzzing isn’t too loud, it doesn’t sound choppy, it’s a constant. Listen to the fan. Listen to the- 

His eyes open to the sound. He knows she means nothing, she doesn’t mean to hurt him or bother him or send him into panic, but the sound is THERE and demands attention. Maybe if he watches where the innocent sound comes from, he can justify it and relax again. 

Just relax. It’ll have to stop soon. She can’t keep on scratching forever. She’ll have to stop. It’ll stop. Please stop, please. 

He knows it’s irrational- to react so immensely to someone on the other side of the room scratching their foot. He know’s it’s stupid. He knows other people, NORMAL people, wouldn't fixate so entirely on this. 

He knows he can’t just ASK her to stop without the guilt. 

Always with the guilt. Always with the eggshells. Always with the leaving the room. Always with the headphones. Always with the never explaining why. 

His steps get faster as he remembers the comfort that silence brings the further he gets from the noise. He didn’t last as long as he would’ve liked out there next to the fan, but as he turns the steady and approved and memorized music back on in his ears, he hopes it won’t always be like that. He hopes the music will always work, that Twenty One Pilots will always be there to restart what is left of his messed up mind after the moments of insanity. He hopes the lyrics will always pick him back up again. He hopes the music will always feel safe.

And he tries to forget the guilt again. Always with the guilt. On and on with the guilt.

The noises never seem to stop.


	2. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is gonna sound weird, all of this is really, but you have NO IDEA how legit this is to me. *shrugs* Oh well.

Do you know how sometimes you might wake up to an annoyingly loud bird outside of your bedroom window? And it’s just out there all chirp-y and happy and free and LOUD? Sometimes you can go back to sleep anyway, despite the critter, with your hands over your ears and your bitter thoughts directed at the stupid bird stuck between them. 

But it’s not always that simple, mind you. 

She’s exhausted after a long day of classes and draining conversations of pointless small talk, but there’s a paper due tomorrow that is only half finished. And so she sits at her desk by the window of her room, typing away and drowning out the sound of the clicking of the keyboard with Twenty One Pilots playing over the speakers. And just when she thinks it’s all going well, that she’ll be done in no time, there’s a crow.

There’s a freaking CROW in the tree right outside of her window. 

Now she just knows that it landed right there solely to smite her as it begins to CAW in that obnoxious crow way and she begins to imagine the tree going up in flames along with her hopes and dreams of finishing this essay and school in general. Yes, this bird just ruined it all.

So, she slaps the window with as much force as she can muster to try to just make it stop because it’s so LOUD and she can’t THINK straight and all of her rational thoughts just flew out the window to sit on the same branch as that stupid CROW. 

And of course, it hurts to slap a window. But of course, it’s not the first time she’s slapped a window. And the crow must just know that she’ll give up her momentary rage and sit back down at her desk in tears in a matter of seconds. It doesn’t even budge.

She knows she’s being silly. It’s not like the crow woke her up and it’s not like her life depends on the crow flying away, but it sure does feel like it in the moment.

The paper sits unfinished on the desk as she turns the volume of her speakers up the whole way. She has to drown out her failures with the music she relates to on every level or she knows she’ll never get back up again. 

Yes, it’s a crow. But to her, it is defeat. It is anger and shame and regret and hurt and guilt. 

Even when it flies away, the feelings all remain.


	3. Chapter 3

Lets rate this one on a scale from one to ten, ten being the most irrational and one the least.  
Can you imagine a writer that hates pencils? It’s not that they hurt to hold for too long or that they cause hand cramps- although those things are true as well as any student probably knows. Instead it’s… it’s…

She sits at her desk as always, two pencils sharpened and at the ready in the ridge to the side of her chemistry exam. Class begins and she begins, blocking out sniffles and coughs and sneaker squeaks and sounds of movement as usual. She never would have made it this far if she couldn’t block out the incessant annoyances, at least for a few minutes at a time. 

She turns the page of the exam booklet and this question stumps her. She has to THINK about this one. It’s a prompt, and as she goes to scribble the first few letters of her response in the box, she writes too heavily. The lead SCRAPES against the paper and she stops mid-letter, eyes squeezed shut. 

Don’t think about it. Think about the answer. Get the answer right. You know this. Write lightly. Swirl the letters together with the calculated ligatures that don’t SCRATCH. Stop thinking about it. Stop it.

Her mind and her ears, of course, latch onto this frustration. She hears every pencil in the room like she’s at the barricade of a concert, but how dare could one great experience be compared to one of torture? 

Think of the music for a second. Distract yourself with the words that mean everything to you. Think of all the songs at once- don’t get one stuck in your head or that will be the end of that. Okay. Am I calm? Calm enough anyway. It’s time to get a move on. Skip the question just get the test done. Don’t let pencils ruin your chance of the score you studied for. 

And maybe it’s not always like this. She has good test days, but also ones that are much worse. This is why she hates the pencils, but learns to overcompensate anyway. If you know everything you need to know, theres less time taking the test, less time to be distracted or become frustrated, more time writing easy answers without slip-ups. 

She knows it’s unfair. But life is too, so she learns to learn and get it right the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm @mygiftofthought on twitter and I'd love to chat about all this with you all. (This one is a bit harsh in a more anxiety inducing way. My brain is almost constantly checking itself to make sure I'm okay, the sounds are okay, and that I can handle it. If I can't- panics happen to me too.)

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on my own struggle with Misophonia. It may not really be a story, but it's important to me that I write this to give people a chance to understand this unknown struggle.


End file.
